Presentation by Paul Prinsloo (Unisa) and Sharon Slade (OU) at EDEN2014

1. Paul Prinsloo, University of South Africa
Sharon Slade, Open University

2. OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENTATION
1. Acknowledgements
2. The changing context of higher education
3. How do we make moral decisions when
resources are (increasingly) limited?
4. Using student data to make more informed
decisions
5. Triage – its history and use in education
6. Principles for the moral use of student data

3. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• All the images used in this presentation
have been sourced from Google labeled
for non-commercial reuse. The links are
provided at the end of the presentation
• A reworked version of this paper has
been accepted for publication in the
International Review of Research in Open
and Distance Learning (IRRODL), (Prinsloo
& Slade, 2014)

4. Disaggregation
Disruption
Doing more with less
Higher
education
Innovation
Unmooring
Student debt
Revolution
Funding cuts
Tsunami
Unbundling
Privatisation
Crisis

5. Higher education should…
• Do more with less
• Expect funding to follow performance rather than
preceding it
• Realise it costs too much, spends carelessly, teach
poorly, plan myopically, and when questioned, act
defensively
(Hartley, 1995, p. 412, 861)
HIGHER EDUCATION AS RISKY
BUSINESS…

6. The $ of student
failure and dropout

7. How do we make moral
decisions when resources
are (increasingly) limited?

8. TO THE RESCUE: LEARNING ANALYTICS

9. Triage: Balancing between the futility or impact of the
intervention juxtaposed with the number of patients
requiring care, the scope of care required, and the
resources available for care/interventions

10. FOUR MORAL PRINCIPLES GUIDING
MEDICAL TRIAGE
1. Respect patient autonomy
2. Beneficence
3. Non-maleficence
4. Justice – care not determined by privilege,
status, race, gender
(Beauchamp & Childress, 2001)

11. BEYOND JUSTICE • Transparency
• Stakeholder
acceptance of
rationale
• Mechanism for
appeals or challenges
• Oversight
(Joynt & Gomersall,
2005)

12. Learning analytics as …

13. “Are students walking around with
invisible triage tags attached, that
only lecturers can see? Is this fair? Or
is it just pragmatic? Like battlefield
medical attention, lecturers’
attention is finite. And as class sizes
and workloads increase, it is
becoming scarcer”
(Manning, 2012, par. 3)

14. How do we make moral
decisions when resources
are (increasingly) limited?

15. FOUR PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE DECISIONS
WHEN RESOURCES ARE INCREASINGLY
LIMITED
1. Student and institutional autonomy are situated
and bounded
2. Beneficence – in the best interest of the student.
No access without success
3. Non-maleficence and transparency
4. Distributive justice

16. WALKING A MORAL TIGHTROPE…
• The reality of resource constraints
• Higher education cannot afford NOT to use student data
• Raw data is an oxymoron
• Students’ digital data do not provide the full picture
and often lacks context
• Our algorithms are not neutral
• Student success is the result of mostly non-linear,
multidimensional, interdependent interactions at
different phases in the nexus between student,
institution and broader societal factors
• We need to move beyond notions of justice, to an ethics
of care.
(See Prinsloo, 2009, Prinsloo & Slade, 2014; Slade &
Prinsloo, 2013)

17. THANK YOU
Paul Prinsloo
Research Professor in Open Distance
Learning (ODL)
College of Economic and Management
Sciences, Office number 3-15, Club 1,
Hazelwood, P O Box 392
Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa
T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)
T: +27 (0) 82 3954 113 (mobile)
prinsp@unisa.ac.za
Skype: paul.prinsloo59
Personal blog:
http://opendistanceteachingandlearning
.wordpress.com
Twitter profile: @14prinsp
Dr Sharon Slade
Senior Lecturer and Regional Manager,
Faculty of Business and Law
The Open University, Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United
Kingdom
T: +44 (0) 1865 486250
Sharon.slade@open.ac.uk
Personal blog:
http://odlsharonslade.wordpress.com/
www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=53
123496&trk=tab_pro

18. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF IMAGE SOURCES
Title page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tightrope_walking
Big data: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DARPA_Big_Data.jpg
Triage:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Wounded_Triag
e_France_WWI.jpg
Justice: http://www.corrections.com/ezine/show/474

19. Beauchamp T. L., & Childress J.F. (2001). Principles of Biomedical Ethics. (5th ed).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hartley, D. (1995). The ‘McDonaldisation’ of higher education: food for thought?
Oxford Review of Education, 21(4), 409—423.
Joynt, G.M., & Gomersall, C.D. (2005). Making moral decisions when resources are
limited – an approach to triage in ICY patients with respiratory failure. South
African Journal of Critical Care (SAJCC), 21(1), 34—44. Retrieved from
http://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajcc/article/view/35543
Manning, C. (2012, March 14). Educational triage. [Web log post]. Retrieved from
http://colinmcit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/educational-triage.html.
Prinsloo, P. (2009). Modelling throughput at Unisa: The key to the successful
implementation of ODL. Retrieved from
http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/6035
Prinsloo, P., & Slade, S. (2014). Educational triage in open distance learning:
walking a moral tightrope. International Review of Research in Open and
Distance Learning. In press.
Slade, S., & Prinsloo, P. (2013). Learning analytics: ethical issues and dilemmas.
American Behavioural Scientist, 57(1) pp. 1509–1528.
REFERENCES

20. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International License.